Joyeux Noel from the South of France - Part 2, Grasse

Next stop, a train to Nice where I was going to pick up a rental car to drive to Avignon.  

But before we leave Monaco I do want to share one story that pretty much typifies my experience in Monaco.  I was on the bus heading to the train station not really entirely sure how far the stop was.  The hotel concierge was kind enough to write down the stop so I knew what words I was looking for but I froze when trying to find the words to ask the bus driver so I figured I'd just bluff my way through it.  Well, a really lovely older lady dressed just impeccably came on the bus...not a hair out of place.  She must have noticed me looking at every stop so when the bus stopped at the Gare (train) stop she pointed for me to get off.  I'm sure such a small gesture of kindness to a stranger for her but such a big one for me....

Hoping a train from Monaco to Nice

Ok, so driving in France was a little daunting but I don't really think it occurred to me how daunting until I was actually sitting in the drivers seat of my mid sized Peugeot (the only one available with GPS)in the Hertz parking lot.  

Driving in a different city in the US is one thing but driving in Nice?  Well, after a short tiny panic attack I took a very deep breath, put the car in drive and prayed for the best as I backed out of the smallest of parking spots and turned my wheel as far to the right as it would go and held it there to avoid the walls of the very narrow steep spiral parking garage exit and headed out to the streets.

There were a few towns on the way to Avignon that I had planned to stop in if I had time/opportunity.  I didn't really plan it out with much detail,  just figured I would take it as I went but did have a rough plan.

My first stop was Grasse.  From what I could tell Grasse is really centered around the 3 perfumeries that are located there.  

Fragonard is the largest and was definitely on my to do list.  They offer tours and have large shops as well as a couple of museum exhibits in town.  

Making soap on the Fragonard Tour 

I ended up spending the rest of my day here enjoying the beauty of Grasse and meandering through the free museum exhibits.  

Shopping in Grasse

Grasse France

Such a charming town and I do love that they really do celebrate their perfume heritage. I definitely could have stayed a bit longer but I still had quite a bit to go to get to Avignon and dusk was approaching.  

To be continued...next up Avignon.

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Joyeux Noel from the South of France - Part 1, Monaco

I don't know about you but while fully enjoyable I find the holidays a bit stressful each year.  I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist by nature so the pressure each year to have that Norman Rockwell Christmas just creeps in even with my best vows to rein it I each year.  So, after another perfectly imperfect holiday last year I vowed to change it up in 2013 to force a more relaxed holiday upon myself.

It all really started last Christmas as I was blog surfing and I stumbled upon some posts from Katy Elliott about a trip she & her husband had made to Provence.  It looked like just the perfect place to escape to.  The seeds were planted....I was going to France.  Nevermind that I didn't (and still don't) speak French and really new very little about the country...except of course that Paris is absolutely fabulous.

And....Audrey Hepburn famously said "Paris is always a good idea"...well, not for this trip.  I was hoping for a little warmer climate plus Paris at Christmas without a special someone by my side...not so much thank you. The warmer temps made Monaco, Nice & Avignon much more appealing.

So, flights booked I headed off to Nice on Christmas Day and after a fairly uneventful 10 hrs hopped a bus to Monaco for my first night.  

Waiting for a bust to take me to Monaco.  Couldn't have been any
easier...just step outside of the airport & wait.

Ok, so not knowing much about Monaco except its only about 1 square mile in its entirety I only planned to stay one day before heading to Avignon so I tried to make the most of my limited time and first thing in the morning headed out for a walk to see the beach/boardwalk.

The boats were just breathtaking...and beyond anything I had ever expected existed in swank

Then headed off to see just where Prince Rainier & Princess Grace lived out their days.

Approaching the Princes Palace...it's quite a hike (yes those
buildings down by the water were the same from the photo
above) if you're going to walk it...but oh so worth it.

It was just beautiful and I found the people extremely warm to an American who could barely utter bonjour without feeling like I was somehow butchering it. 

The Prince's Palace..fairly unassuming for a palace I thought

Only planning on one day was really a mistake, oh my gosh I love Monaco!  I really didn't get to see all I wanted to but trust me I will be back!  

To be continued....next up, my day in Grasse.

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Fall in the Berkshires - Steepletop

About a year ago at this time I took a spontaneous road trip to Pittsfield MA to check out the Pine Cone Hill Outlet and was rewarded with beautiful linens at bargain prices (you can read about that adventure HERE).  One of my blog readers was kind enough to leave me a comment about a special tent sale they have every Columbus Day weekend.  

Now you must know by now I would not be able to pass this by.  

So after spending a week here

On top of the world thanks to a Pink Jeep Tour in
Sedona AZ

I got home just in time to hop in my car and meet up with one of my pals and hit the tent sale which was absolutely fabulous (I will be going back next year!) and then visit Edna St Vincent Millay’s house in Austerlitz NY.

Edna St Vincent Millay was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who spent much of her childhood in Camden Maine (as did I) and spent a bit of time in Union Maine (as did I) she also lived in Massachusetts for a time (as do I) and upstate New York (as did I).  She also lived in Paris (as did I…oh wait a minute that was only a dream for me).  Born in 1892 she was just a little older than my great-grandmother so her life really brings images of the stories my grandmother used to tell us when we were kids.

This summer my reading list included the Nancy Milford biography of Ms. Millay, Savage Beauty. Although she was very famous and from the very small town in Maine I lived, I knew amazingly little about her so it was particularly fascinating for me to read about her.

I can’t say enough good things about the biography.  Nancy Milford really did a stellar job at painting the picture of the enigmatic, complicated, beautiful, tortured poet who went by Vincent.  Pick it up, you won’t regret it.

Ok, back to my Berkshires visit.  Vincent & her husband Eugen Boissevain bought Steepletop in 1925 and both lived there until their deaths – hers a year after his.  It was a blueberry farm that they bought from a New York Times ad and renovated to look like a New England farm house.  

The pool bar...lots of friends gathered
photo source

The pool - #1 rule was no clothes...ever.
photo source

The pool now...needs a little preservation work

They lived here as bohemians with much love, life & hard work.  They lived self-sufficiently not even having electricity until the 1940’s.  

Ladies Home Journal put a state of the art kitchen for Vincent in 1949 to feature in their magazine
photo source

photo source

photo source

After both Eugen & Vincent’s deaths Vincent’s sister Norma lived at Steepletop carefully preserving the house, living around Vincent’s possessions for decades until Norma’s death in the 1980’s.  Steepletop didn’t open to the public until 2010.  

Vincent's Library....no one was allowed in this room but Vincent...Ever.
photo source

photo source

The really great thing about this house is it is filled with Vincent & Eugen’s actual possessions many of which are in the exact same spot as they were when Vincent died in 1950.  Amazing and there is such a sense of Edna that remains in this house.  You can really feel her work and life here.

To add to the pleasure of the day it’s Fall in New England…what can be better? 

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Cleaning House...Landscaping Update

It’s been a quiet summer project wise at my house.  I had great plans of getting all kinds of things done this summer but for many reasons (most of which have been schedule related – mine & others) it’s been a lot of that frustrating hurry up and wait. 

Well, a couple of weeks ago it’s been a huge two steps forward!

Step 1 - The landscaper came to do major demo on my yard….so excited!!!!!  It’s really starting to look better but it sure hasn’t been a smooth process.
If you remember this is some of the before.  Unfortunately I really did not take great photo’s of how overgrown it really was when I moved in.  But I have since snapped a few so you can get an idea it just based on of how full the planting is.

  

Before - just before I signed the papers to be responsible for this lawn

Another Before...the back yard.  That red roof in the center is actually a wishing well.  I was a bit nervous
there would be an actual well  below it...luckily no.

Another before view of the backyard

Before...after I had done some major cleaning out of the over growth.

I originally hired a non-professional who needed a job to do some demo for me with the hopes that if he could get it all cleared out I could simply level the dirt and lay sod down.  Well, half way into the project my non-professional dropped off the face of the earth (of course after he had been paid for the time he had already put in) with not a word.  Luckily he didn’t burn me financially and didn’t leave a huge mess but it did leave my yard unfinished for most of the summer.  I knew that there was a risk that this would happen but it was worth a shot right?

During...after the initial demo.  Unfortunately this was my back yard for most of the summer

So after several weeks of waiting I moved forward and called a professional landscaping company having also decided to just turn the whole project over and forget the DIY fantasy I was having.  Couple of weeks later I had a quote in hand.  By this time it was almost August…where was the summer going??? 

And since it was August already I figured no reason to pay the extra for sod I might as well wait until September cooler days and use seed.  I’ve heard a lot of pros/cons on the whole sod vs seed debate and since we were so late in the season the major pro of instant gratification of sod was really becoming irrelevant. So seed it is.

During...freshly leveled, tilled & seeded

During... .aerial view from my 2nd floor window

I am most definitely not a gardener and had actually never even mowed a lawn before I moved into this house 5 years ago (condo living does have its perks you know).  So less is definitely more in my world on the gardening front.

Before...the garden on the right side of the front was a raised bed and FULL of weeds (and a couple of bushes).

During...fully demo'd and new grass is planted

 I have left 1 flower garden in place in the front of my house, next to my driveway.  This I can manage.

This is the after...this was so full of growth when I moved in that the cement wall was not even visible.

The rest I am happy to say is one step closer to clean & easy plantings that require minimal care.  Stay tuned for what's next now that I have a blank slate to work with.

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Cooking with Gas

This week was a good week for my kitchen, a very good week.  I have grand plans for this kitchen but am a way away from execution since I’m on a cash-only basis with all my repairs….so for now I’ve painted and made very minor updates to get me by until I can start moving some walls but it’s definitely a less than ideal kitchen.

Kitchen...the before.  This was taken on one of my walk through's before I actually closed....Remember this
wall paper from my diningroom before post?  Yup it really was everywhere

Part of the joy of not cooking in my kitchen for the last couple of years has been this baby…

Cooking old school on my Magic Chef Gourmet Collection Stove...

Yes, there are only 3 burners…and a metal plate soldered in the hole where the 4th burner used to be…and the oven….oh the oven.  Everything either over baked or under baked…..and no working broiler left me pan frying sirloin tips one night when my grill unexpectedly ran out of gas….ugggh.

So, I have known since I moved in it was past time to replace.  The only problem…and this was sort of a big one…I wanted a gas range…and my house was not piped for gas….and natural gas doesn't run down far enough on my street to reach my house (I’m toward the end of a dead end).

This was going to be work….not just your routine shop and wait for the delivery.  I called my plumber (thank you Tim Liporto!) to get the piping going and scheduled a site visit with a gas company who stood me up (a little longer story here but the crux is they stood me up after I rushed out of work early one day and battled traffic to get home to meet with them…not pleased!), then called a different gas company who not only showed up on a snowy Saturday morning but was so pleasant & helpful in walking me through exact next steps….thank you Adam Scott at Scott Energy in Gloucester!

I did quite a bit of online “window shopping” to find just the perfect stove…an LG double oven, 5 burner so I was prepared when I went off to the appliance store (I really wanted to buy local).  In the first store the old geezer sales guy was so condescending to me I refused to spend a dime with them.  Really, I came in with exactly what I wanted to buy, had done the research, knew the appropriate price & questions to ask.  It wasn't a tough sale…10 min max.

Moving along…I then went to Yale Appliance.  Holy cow, they were awesome!  I had heard they were…and they went beyond expectation.  I went in with the info on the LG model I had picked and was immediately greeted by a receptionist who introduced me to a sales guy to help.  20 min later I had seen what they had, discussed the pros & cons of the LG model and ended up leaving a bit poorer but the proud (and VERY pleased) owner of a Kitchen Aide double oven/5 burner beauty.

Showroom floor at Yale Appliance & Lighting

296 Freeport St  Dorchester, MA

source

The following week (last week) they delivered and that couldn’t have gone any better.  I was soooo worried the delivery guys would have problems with my very old and narrow doorways.  Nope, they arrived (on time!) and were in and out in 10 min.

she looks kind of sad on that liftgate...almost like she knows she's heading to the
great appliance nursing home in the sky

Mostly because of my crazy schedule, this whole process took waaayyy longer than it should have (months)….but my patience finally paid off and my new stove was installed on Tuesday.

Fresh off the truck...not yet installed

Now just need to decide what to do with the hood...replace with a micro-hood or embrace
the vintage and keep it (it works fine)...the microwave has to go!

Now I’m just a little reluctant to use it…it’s so pretty and I just don’t want to get it dirty ha.

Look ma...no paint on the side

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